He drove home balanced between relief and desolation. His responsibilities for her were shared now. She was in the hands of professionals. There’s more to it than that, though, he thought. It’s the paternalism, too. A duly constituted authority has appeared on the scene. The beds are made square and the floors are clean and supper comes in balanced variety, planned by a dietician, properly nourishing, with the calories all counted. A clean well-lighted place. He felt no guilt over his relief. He knew he needed it. He knew his reactions were human, all of them. Objectively he was fascinated to watch what happened to him in extremity. If there’s such a thing as the essential self, he thought, as he pulled out onto Lynnfield Street, I am now in touch with it. This is real.
It was the implacable reality of it all that startled him regularly. She couldn’t die and yet she might. He could not lose her and yet he might. Death isn’t the mother of beauty. It’s just death. The realist bastard there is. It was a reality he faced with a desolation too profound to speak, even to himself. And he felt himself press against it with a soundless inarticulate certainty that he could stand the desolation. I have two sons. He said to himself. I have two sons.
He pulled into his driveway under the thirty-year-old sugar maple that was starting to green. In March they had tapped it, and taken out enough sap for three quarts of maple syrup. He’d closed the hole with a plug made from a maple branch and already the tree was beginning to heal around it.
Inside the boys seemed easy and unsuspicious. Both had been in the hospital at one time or another and it held no mysteries for them. But he didn’t want to be home. It was too bright, too pleasant, and he knew the bright pleasantness might be illusory. He was hard pressed to be easy and unconcerned.
“I gotta go tell Jude that Mom’s all settled in, and where she is and stuff,” he said.
Dave nodded. Dan said, “Okay.”
He walked across the street and into Judy’s house. Her kids were in the den watching TV. Judy was in the kitchen.
“John’s got hockey,” she said. “How is she?”
“Good,” he said. “She’s in West Wing Two. Private room, which is good.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah. She’s scared. She’s scared most that they’ll keep cutting away at her.”
Judy started to cry. She said, “Oh, Ace.”
“I won’t let them cut away a piece at a time. I promised her that.” He felt the old feeling. The achiness in the throat, the voice becoming hoarse, and he started to cry too. It was the only time.
“Jesus Christ, Ace, I’m supposed to be consoling you.”
He turned from her, embarrassed that he’d cried and that his nose was runny.
“You’re doing swell, Jude,” he said. He got a paper towel from her towel rack and blew his nose.
From the front door a voice said, “Hello” and Bill Ganem came in with two of his children.
Judy, red-eyed and weeping, said, “Hi, Bill.” Ace blew his nose again.
“Is Eileen with you?” Ace said.
“She’s in New Jersey with Barbara and Billy. I was up at my mothers and thought I’d stop off on my way home.”
He knew something was wrong. “Where’s John and J?” he said. Bill had known them since they were all eighteen, and he’d always called Joan by her first initial, no one could remember why now, if there had even been a reason.
“John’s got hockey,” Judy said. She looked at Ace. “Why don’t Cindy and Sally go watch TV with my kids,” Jude said.
Bill shooed his daughters into the den. When they were gone Ace said, “This is going to be tough to hear and you don’t have to have any reactions to it. I wouldn’t know what to say if I were you and it’s okay. Joan’s in the hospital, she found a lump in her left breast and it’s probably cancerous and they will probably have to take the breast.”
Bill’s round Arabic face darkened and the lines deepened and pain showed. It was one of his charms, a capacity for empathy that one rarely encountered. Sometimes people are only startled, Ace thought, but he hurts too. Like Jude.
“Jesus Christ,” Bill said. “Are they sure?”
“No. But they’re pretty sure. They’ll do some tests Monday and Tuesday, and biopsy her Wednesday. If it’s malignant they’ll take the breast before she wakes up.”
“Jesus Christ. I won’t tell Eileen until Wednesday. Will you call me and tell me as soon as you know?”
“Yes.”
“If I tell Eileen she’ll be upset as a bastard. I won’t tell her until you’re sure. She’ll want to come right home.”
“Tell her not to. There’s no need.”
“She’ll be punchy coming out of anesthesia,” Judy said. “She’ll have a lot of medication and she won’t feel like visitors for at least a day, maybe more.”
Ace got two beers out of Judy’s refrigerator and gave one to Bill. They drank the beers and talked a little and the pain never left Bill’s face. When the beer was gone he took the kids and left.
“I bet he’s glad he stopped off,” Ace said.
“Poor Bill.”
“When Joan has the surgery I’d like you to special her.”
“Of course.”
“I think she needs a woman, and I want to be sure someone’s there.”
“Yes, that will be good. That way if she is in pain I can go right down and get the medication and make sure she gets it as soon as she can have it.”
“She worrying about looking bad in your eyes when she’s coming to and acting crazy.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know. But she worries about stuff like that.”
They were quiet.
“Can I count on you to special her as long as she needs it,” he said. “I don’t mean like four hours, I mean as long as it takes?”
“Oh, Ace, of course.”
“I expect to pay.”
“Oh, Ace, fuck off.”
“No, I mean that. There’s no reason to not get paid.”
“Shut up.”
“Jude, you’re supposed to be cheering me up and making me feel better.”
“Then don’t be an asshole.”
“We’ll talk about it later. How did John react?”
“He couldn’t believe it. He kept saying ‘Joan?’ I mean it was like, Joan’s too lively and, you know, healthy.”
“Vital,” Ace said.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Words are my game,” Ace said.
“He couldn’t get over not knowing last night. I think he felt bad about that, but he understood why.”
It was starting to get dark outside Joan’s window and she couldn’t see the neat yards in back of the small houses very well anymore. A nurse opened the door and stuck her head in. She was a young nurse with long brown hair and sharp pretty features. She scanned the room and saw no tray.
“Have you had supper?”
Joan shook her head. “No, I haven’t,” she said, trying to keep any hint of martyrdom out of her voice.
“Well, that’s a mistake; somebody hasn’t been on the job. I’ll get supper right up to you. Why don’t you pull that table over and I’ll be right back with a tray.”
Her head disappeared and Joan heard her rubber-soled shoes thumping down the corridor. She pulled the table over and swung it around in front of her. The nurse came back in with the supper tray, the white skirt of her uniform whipping as she walked.
Supper was a slice of roast veal, whipped potatoes, carrots, and cottage cheese with pineapple. Joan ate it all. My stomach doesn’t know I have cancer. I’m eating like a cow. I’m also having continual diarrhea from fear and losing weight anyway. I may as well eat while I can.
After she had been discovered nurses dropped in all evening.
This is a terrific group of nurses, Joan thought. But it’s my ailment too. There’s something about breast cancer and mastectomy that brings women closer to me. There’s a feeling almost of sisterhood. My God, me and Ti-Grace Atkinson — Sisterhood. But it was there, a sense of specialness, of a woman’s mystery, that men, even Ace, could not entirely share. Mingled with the fear and the terrors of disfigurement and dissolution, there was a sense of new doors opening, and a new sense of femalehood. If I make this, I’ll have to think about that. For now she knew that her care was warm and supportive and superlative. She discovered that she didn’t know how nurses were at all.
Sunday night Ace called his mother and father and told them what he knew. They were calm about it. His mother knew several people who’d had mastectomies years ago and were fine. He felt somehow calmer talking to them. Some things you never lose, he thought afterward, remembering his mother’s calm voice on the phone. Parents still make you feel secure. We never completely give up on Santa Claus.